Clear your calendar - It's going down! Text Blocks kicks off on May 20th, and you're invited to take part in the festivities. Splash HQ (122 W 26th St) is our meeting spot for a night of fun and excitement. Come one, come all, bring a guest, and hang loose. This is going to be epic!

Clean

and Simple

Clear your calendar - It's going down! Text Blocks kicks off on May 20th, and you're invited to take part in the festivities. Splash HQ (122 W 26th St) is our meeting spot for a night of fun and excitement. Come one, come all, bring a guest, and hang loose. This is going to be epic!

The Hack The Dinos challenge is a special event -- it is not a hackathon where teams will mashup a couple of APIs or build trivial toy apps that never get used. It is a pro bono collaboration with the museum to advance open science and create open-source solutions to real problems faced by scientists and researchers. The museum is asking for your help to start building long-needed open-source tools and applications that will aid the AMNH paleontology division in their research and education, which could ultimately help other museums and institutions as well.

WHEN WILL IT BE?The weekend starts with a kick-off event on Friday, November 20th, from 6-9pm. We'll get you registered, hand out swag, feed you, and (most importantly) give you an overview of the paleo data sets and deep dive into the challenges so you can hit the ground running on Saturday. You'll meet AMNH's dinosaur experts and learn all about the terminology, data formats, and science involved in the challenges so you can spend your time building and not struggling with jargon. We'll also give you time to form teams Friday night.

The challenge itself will take place from 3pm Saturday, 11/21 to 3pm Sunday, 11/22. Your team will have about 24 hours to build something that solves some (or all!) of a particular problem statement. You may even collaborate with several teams to work on different aspects of the same solution - Hack The Dinos is all about cooperation, not competition. We will finalize challenges and data sample sets and publish on Github ahead of the event so you may work or plan ahead as well. The emphasis is on building working prototypes, not clickable demos; even if your project is incomplete, having a solid foundation to build upon will be a huge step forward for the advancement of paleontology. Demos will be open to the public on Sunday, from 3-5:30pm in the dinosaur wing of the Museum. (Feel free to invite your friends!)

DON'T MISS AN UNFORGETTABLE EVENT!We hope that you'll choose to spend the night on Saturday at the museum where participants will be able to sleep among the dinosaur exhibits! We'll be providing food, drink, thank you gifts, and cots throughout the challenge (just bring your sleeping bag, pillow, and warm socks -- it can get drafty!) If you don’t choose to stay, you will be able to exit the museum Saturday night and return at 9:00 a.m. on Sunday.

Speaking of food -- we'll be hooking you up! Taco bars, Mediterranean platters, cheese boards, yogurt parfaits, bagel bars, plus a midnight cookie and coffee delivery? You bet. We heard your feedback from Hack the Universe last year, and we'll be offering yummy and substantial options for the gluten-free, lactose-free, and vegan eaters among you.

APPLY NOW

Okay, okay, you wanna come. Good! We are currently full -- but you can apply for the waitlisthere and we'll let you know if any spots open up. Plans often change at the last minute, and we admitted many of our waitlisted attendees last year.

We can't wait to hang out after-hours in the dino wing with you. And our paleontologists can't wait to see what we build together. See you at Hack the Dinos!

Join us for a film screening of "The Human Face of Big Data", which captures the extraordinary big data revolution that is sweeping, almost invisibly, through business, academia, government, healthcare, and everyday life.

A cocktail reception and talkback with leading experts featured in the film to follow. Best of all: it's FREE!

Test your hand at coding and explore how you, too, can get involved in computer science. Meet data scientists and Brown Scholars from our newest education program, BridgeUp: STEM, as they discuss how computer science is used in their work. Discover how programmers and scientists are working together to mine the Museum’s paleontology database, developing new ways to visualize and understand current research.

Sunday, November 22nd, Noon–5:30 p.m.

When

November

20

to

November

22

who's who

Christina Wallace

Director, BridgeUP: STEM

Mike Caprio

organizer, Space Apps NYC

AMNH Paleo Data

There's a lot of it

you

developer, designer, hacker extraordinaire

The Final Countdown!

Time left for the event
days
hours
minutes
seconds

The countdown doesn't work if the event start date is set to TBD

Countdown

"Hackathons are often most useful to the hackers themselves—participants come and work through ideas, meet one another, and learn new tricks and coding languages. They’re great events for community building, for publicity and for experimentation, but rarely—in my experience—do hackathons create lasting, useful products. This hackathon was different."